Venue & Travel

Lodging

Boston Marriott Cambridge Hotel

TEI has secured a discount rate for TEI registrants at the Boston Marriott Cambridge located at 2 Cambridge Center, Cambridge Mass. 02142 (a 3 minute walk to the Media Lab and 1 minute walk to the Subway).

The rate is $121 per night (plus taxes) for a room. To reserve a room call 1-800-228-9290 and tell them you would like a room in the TEI 2010 room block for the negotiated rate. There are a limited number of rooms available at this rate, the cut off date for the discounted rate is January 8th so make sure to make your reservation before then.

Hostels

We do not have a recommended Hostel for TEI'10 but there are a number of Hostels near the conference. Boston and Cambridge have an extensive public transportation system and directions to the conference via bus or subway can be found using google maps.

Car

Subway

Boston's light-rail system is known as "The T," and goes to much of Boston and Cambridge. Here is a map of the routes. Single use or multi-trip tickets can be purchased at any station with cash or card.

If you are coming from Boston, take the Red Line "outbound" to Kendall Square / MIT.

If you are coming from Cambridge, take the Red Line "inbound" to Kendall Square / MIT.

Once you are here, exit to the surface and find yourself on Main Street in the heart of Kendall Square. Walk one block west (away from the River) on Main Street. Make a left on Ames Street. Walk one block down Ames, and find the Media Lab on your left.

Airport

MIT is a 10 - 15 minute taxi ride from Boston's Logan International Airport. Public transit is also available from the airport to campus. Take the Silver Line Bus to South Station, then take the Red Line T "inbound" to Kendall / MIT. Give yourself 30 - 45 minutes depending on bus and train arrival times.

Media Lab Building in Cambridge

Boston, Cambridge, and MIT

Boston is the largest city in New England and is considered the economic and cultural center of the region. The area encompasses many significant locations in American history and culture, including the Freedom Trail, the site of the Boston Tea Party, the USS Constitution, and the site of the Salem witch trials. Boston is known as a global educational center with more than 100 colleges and universities located in the greater Boston area, and more than 250,000 students attending college in Boston and Cambridge alone.

Across the river from Boston, Cambridge is home to over 100,000 people living in a unique and multicultural community just outside of Boston. Cambridge is bursting with cafes, bookstores and boutiques offering an intellectual yet funky feel to the city. Cambridge is home to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University, defining this city as the academic heart of the country. Cambridge isn't only about books and brainiacs though. It has a little of everything including a thriving music scene, artsy cinemas and theaters, many interesting galleries and museums and fabulous dining with a collection of great restaurants.

MIT has a history of leading the world in technology, displayed by over 50 Nobel Prize winners as current faculty or former alumni. The MIT Media Lab comprises rigorous research and graduate degree programs, where traditional disciplines get checked at the door. Future-obsessed product designers, nanotechnologists, data-visualization experts, industry researchers, and pioneers of computer interfaces work side by side to tirelessly invent—and reinvent—how humans experience, and can be aided by, technology.

TEI, the conference on tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction, is about HCI, design, interactive art, user experience, tools and technologies, with a strong focus on how computing can bridge atoms and bits into cohesive interactive systems.